Showing results by narrator "Adenrele Ojo" in All Categories

Black women are beautiful, intelligent, and capable - but mostly they embrace strong. Esteemed clinical psychologist Dr. Inger Burnett-Zeigler praises the strength of women while exploring how trauma and adversity have led to deep emotional pain and shaped how they walk through the world.

All Maxine needs is a name. Just one piece of information could help Maxine mend a past mistake and let go of her broken past. That name she needs? Her father's murderer. Not because she harbors any tender feelings toward the bastard who beat her mother into a coma. She's desperate to know his last words. She's steadily clawing down obstacles one lie, one trap at a time...until she encounters a brick wall without a single chink in it. Blu, the enforcer guarding the Blackwater Renegades MC's front door. A tattooed, mohawked mountain of muscle whose ice-blue gaze sets her belly on fire.

Nationally recognized self-esteem and communication expert S. Renee Smith distills what she’s learned and taught about assertiveness over the past 20 years into five easy-to-follow steps. Built on her successful engagement with hundreds of organizations and individual clients, S. Renee has curated this actionable five-step how-to guide that will help you see the value of what you have to say - and gain the confidence to say it.

The foremost diverse children's authors and illustrators - including Jason Reynolds, Jacqueline Woodson, and Kwame Alexander - share answers to the question, "In this divisive world, what shall we tell our children?" in this powerful collection, published in partnership with Just Us Books.

For best friends Lola Poole and Joan Proctor-Riley, there's never too much when it comes to online dating rich, no-commitment lovers. It's a fantasy come true and makes their unhappy lives bearable. But there's no escape when Lola's vicious relatives cheat her out of everything that's hers and Joan's husband pulls a devastating betrayal. With nothing to lose, the two will do everything and anything to lock down Mr. Right and lifetime satisfaction.

To seventeen-year-old Angie, who is mixed-race, Marilyn is her hardworking, devoted white single mother. But Marilyn was once young, too. When Marilyn was seventeen, she fell in love with Angie's father, James, who was African-American. But Angie's never met him, and Marilyn has always told her he died before she was born. When Angie discovers evidence of an uncle she's never met she starts to wonder: What if her dad is still alive, too?

Valiant Jackson always gets what he wants - and he's wanted Mae for years. The door finally opens for him when Mae strikes a bargain: seduce her virginal young cousin, Cecily, who is engaged to Frank Washington. Frank values her innocence above all else. If successful, Val's reward will be a night with Mae. But Val secretly seeks another prize. Elizabeth Townsend is fiercely loyal to her church and her civil rights attorney husband. Little does she know that her worst mistake will be Val's greatest triumph.

Trapped by the limitations of her middle school adjective and the realities of her mother's alcohol addiction, Sophie's perspective on what being pretty really means changes drastically in the second adjective-busting novel by the author of Husky, Justin Sayre. Set three months after Husky's conclusion and narrated by Sophie, Davis' best friend, Sayre details the private and public life of someone saddled with the adjective of pretty.

Jesus didn't say that the world would know we are his followers by our biting rhetoric, our political leanings, our charity work, or even by our knowledge of Scripture. He said the world would know us by our love for one another. Yet it's so easy to put others at arm's length, to lash out, to put up walls. Deidra Riggs wants us to put our focus on self-preservation aside and, like Jesus, make the first move toward reconciliation.

Years after his tragic death, Trayvon Martin’s name is still evoked every day. He has become a symbol of social justice activism, as has his hauntingly familiar image: the photo of a child still in the process of becoming a young man, wearing a hoodie and gazing silently at the camera. But who was Trayvon Martin, before he became, in death, an icon? And how did one Black child’s death on a dark, rainy street in a small Florida town become the match that lit a civil rights crusade?

LaToya Williams lives in Montgomery, Alabama, and attends a mostly white high school. It seems as if her only friend is her older brother, Alex. Toya doesn't know where she fits in, but after a run-in with another student, she wonders if life would be different if she were...different. And then a higher power answers her prayer: to be "anything but black". Toya is suddenly white, blond, and popular. Now what?

Did you know that many of America's Founding Fathers - who fought for liberty and justice for all - were slave owners? Through the powerful stories of five enslaved people who were "owned" by four of our greatest presidents, this book helps set the record straight about the role slavery played in the founding of America. From Billy Lee, valet to George Washington, to Alfred Jackson, faithful servant of Andrew Jackson, these dramatic narratives explore our country's great tragedy - that a nation "conceived in liberty" was also born in shackles.

Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. In the wake of Chicago Noir, Twin Cities Noir, and Kansas City Noir - all popular volumes in the Akashic Noir Series - comes the latest Midwest installment, St. Louis Noir. Masterfully curated by Scott Phillips, author of The Ice Harvest (adapted for film, starring John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton), this volume will chill the listener with heartland menace.

They call themselves the Blackbirds. Kwanzaa Browne, Indigo Abdulrahaman, Destiny Jones, and Ericka Stockwell are four best friends who are closer than sisters, and will go to the ends of the earth for one another. Yet even their deep bond can’t heal all wounds from their individual pasts, as the collegiate and post-collegiate women struggle with their own demons, drama, and desires.

For one night a couple checks in to an upscale hotel. The pair seem unlikely companions, from opposing strata of society, but their attraction is palpable to all who observe them - or overhear their cries of passion. In the course of 12 hours, con games, erotic interludes, jealousy, violence, and murder swirl around them. Will they part ways in bliss, in sorrow, or in death?

His focus is on his family's football dynasty. Louisiana billionaire Gervais Reynaud has no time for romance. But he can't say no to a tryst with Erika Mitras. True, she's a princess, but in no way prim...or proper. Their time together is unbelievable - and all too short. When Erika said good-bye, she meant it. But now she must tell Gervais the truth. He's about to be a father...to royal twins. After leaving her overbearing family, Erika wants nothing from Gervais. But the tempting tycoon just may charm her into a future she desires all too much.

Pediatrician Parker Reese likes to play the field and usually has women at his beck and call. Until caring for a newborn in crisis sets him on a collision course with beautiful but standoffish nurse Clare Connelly. He's willing to wager he can seduce her despite herself. But as they bond over healing the baby, the question becomes: Who's seducing whom? Soon all bets are off, but can Clare trust her heart to this player, or is it just a game?

Tiny and helpless, the abandoned newborn that venture capitalist Marcus Warren finds during a morning run takes him by surprise. So does the sudden longing for his capable assistant, Liberty Reese, who reveals her tender side with the baby.

What if the last hope to save your family is the person who broke it up to begin with? Michelle and her little siblings Cass and Denny are African-American and living on the poverty line in urban Baltimore, struggling to keep it together with their mom in jail and only Michelle’s part-time job at the Taco Bell to sustain them. Leah and her stepbrother Tim are White and middle class from suburban Maryland, with few worries beyond winning lacrosse games and getting college applications in on time.

A Free Woman on God's Earth is the story of Elizabeth "Mumbet" Freeman, the enslaved African woman who had the courage and conviction to speak what was in her heart, suing for her freedom in a Massachusetts court of law. In gaining her own freedom, she set the stage for the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts in 1783.